The Nurse Leader as Knowledge Worker

Main Post

Nursing Informatics is the “science and practice that integrates nursing, its information, and knowledge, with information and communication technologies to promote the health of people, families, and communities worldwide.” (IMIA,2009). This is all aimed at empowering healthcare professionals to achieve patient-centered care by collecting data and coming up with decisions that will identify the quality of care the patients need. Working as a nurse for several years, I did realize the importance of data collection, it has created a holistic view of patients, personalized treatments, advanced treatment methods, improve communication between doctors and patients, and enhance health outcomes.

Working at an inpatient psychiatric facility, patients to the emergency room with critical conditions especially now with Covid for further evaluation. The nurse knows that patients going to the ER don’t get to be seen by their primary healthcare doctor. Thus, while sending the patient into the ER, the nurses will be sent along with the patient’s health records which will include the patient’s ongoing treatment plan the nurse to send more detailed information regarding the patient’s current health status, ongoing. These information These health data collection includes Vital signs, Labs, faced sheets, current medication, allergy list, Polst status, and diagnostic test result. The receiving Doctor at the ER then receives the health record either by paperwork and or by electronic transmission, he uses the information to better assessed these patients to provide a better quality of care. Electronic healthcare records help to promote care coordination among healthcare workers. EHR enables clinicians treating people in a variety of settings to exchange and continuously update a patient’s clinical data and then present that information in logical clinical groupings that other clinicians can access easily (Burton et al, 2004).In this scenario, the nurse happens to send a patient to the ER in a rush and unable to print out the patient’s health care record, with the help of technology the nurses will either faxed over the patient’s health record to the receiving Dr. continuation of care.

The healthcare system continues to advance in technology in order to dignify a better quality of care for the patients. The nursing informatics shows nurses have integrated into the field of IT automatically. So they should be able to deal with it successfully to improve the quality of care outcome. In this regard, it is required to study the influence of nursing informatics on health care and make bold the appropriate information technology educational needs for nurses.

Thus a nurse leader with technological skills uses the EHR to provide quality cares to the patients, by making sure the health records are accurately gathered and easily make accessible to the other members in the care team either through fax, email, or instant messenger for continuity of care.